South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) appoints David Bradley as Chief Executive

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) is delighted to announce that it has appointed David Bradley to take over as Chief Executive when Dr Matthew Patrick steps down in July.

David has over 30 years’ experience working within the NHS and is a highly experienced Chief Executive. Over the last seven years David has led South West London and St. George’s Mental Health NHS Trust (SWLSTG) where he is Chief Executive.

Since 2012 David has led major transformations in mental health to improve patient care and the quality of services across south west London. This includes securing support for two new state of the art £180m mental health hospitals, improving clinical pathways and creating award-winning alternative services to inpatient admissions like the Lotus Assessment Suite.

Alongside Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust the two mental health trusts already work closely together as part of the South London Mental Health and Community Partnership (SLP). The successful partnership has helped to improve services through clinically-led change and has made real progress improving patient outcomes by delivering new models of care in forensic services and child and adolescent mental health.

David Bradley said:

“I am very pleased to be appointed Chief Executive at SLaM where we will continue to work hard to improve mental health services in south London for patients and carers.

“Mental health impacts one in four people at some point in their life and we will work closely with the people who use our services, their families and carers to shape how our services are delivered to best meet their needs. I will work with staff from across the trust to look at how we can improve our services to deliver the very best patient care.

“There has been a tremendous amount of good work taking place under Matthew’s excellent leadership. We will build on this ensuring that we remain at the forefront of mental health innovation.

“I would like to thank patients, carers and staff at SWLSTG for helping to transform services over the last seven years and I know that we will continue to work together through the SLP.”

Roger Paffard, Chair, SLaM said:

“I am delighted that the trust has appointed David after a competitive appointment process. He is an experienced leader in the NHS, a champion of mental health, and a tremendous driver of positive change. Under his guidance, SWLSTG has seen improvements to how it cares for patients, leading to a ‘good’ rating from the CQC across all five domains.”

“As one of the founding CEOs of the SLP, he will be able to continue to push our work together with Oxleas and SWLSTG continuing to make a real difference to how local people access and experience mental health care.

“We are looking forward to David starting with us. At the same time the Board would like to thank Dr Matthew Patrick for his incredible dedication and commitment to the trust and for his contribution to mental health care over his 34-year NHS career. We will take the opportunity to thank Matthew properly before his departure in July.”

David is due to begin in his new role in July 2019 to ensure continuity of leadership at SLaM. Recruitment is underway for David’s successor.